Beauty & Skincare / Health & Fitness / Lifestyle — 1 comment
14
May 10

Your Skin and UV Rays – Jill Sung

We’re always talking about how to protect yourself from UV damage, but never about the UV itself or why. So a brief overview! (We’ll delve deeper in days to come…so please stay tuned.)

UV Primer: What is it?

Any time the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays (invisible radiation) are able to reach the earth, there is a risk for excessive sun exposure, meaning radiation that can penetrate and change the structure of your skin cells. Exposure to UV rays appears to be THE most important environmental factor in the development of skin cancer and has also been associated with various forms of eye damage, such as cataracts .  UVA and UVB have been shown to increase your risk of developing skin cancer.

There are three types of UV rays: ultraviolet A (UVA), ultraviolet B (UVB), and ultraviolet C (UVC).

  • UVA: most abundant source of solar radiation at the earth’s surface, and penetrates beyond the top layer of your skin to cause damage to connective tissue
  • UVB:less abundant at the earth’s surface than UVA because a significant portion of UVB is absorbed by the ozone layer,  does not penetrate as deep into the skin as UVA does, but is still damaging
  • UVC: extremely hazardous to skin, but it is completely absorbed by the stratospheric ozone layer so does not reach earth’s surface
Know Thyself : Skin Type

UV radiation’s effect on each person depends on a few factors:

  • skin type
  • time of year
  • amount of sun exposure you’ve recently received

Your skin tone and susceptibility to burning can be checked on the classification chart to the left.  (Incidentally, this chart is also used to determine how you’ll respond to facial treatments.) But why is this important?

Why Should I Know Myself?

When UV rays start penetrating your skin,  the skin’s melanocytes kick into high gear and start producing melanin (dark pigment that gives skin its color – tan or skin tone), which results in a tan. People with fair skin, however, tend to burn, because they have fewer melanocytes and produce less melanin.

Knowing your skin tone is probably most important to help you prevent SKIN CANCER.  Skin tone types I-III (in red) have a greater risk of developing skin cancer than  types IV-VI. That means you need to do more to protect yourself. But those with darker skin tones don’t get away with it that easily either, you might be able to wear a lower SPF sunscreen, but no one is immune to ultraviolet rays and the damage they cause. (according to American Cancer Society)

Ok, so that’s it for now. What’s your skin type?  Any questions before we move on to UV Index then how to protect yourself?

Beauty & Skincare / Products / Specials / Videos — No comments
07
May 10

JUARA Mother’s Day Contest: WIN $50 FOR YOU AND YOUR MOM!

Entry deadline: Wed, May 12, 2010 – The week after Mother’s Day…

JUARA knows the important role mothers play in our lives. Tell us why your mom is the best, and you could win a $50 JUARA gift certificate for you AND your mom! Winners will be picked on the Friday AFTER Mother’s Day! (2 days after the deadline…)

Enter the contest by answering “Why My Mom is the Best Mom Ever!” at:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JDLXCQM

The winner’s answer will be posted on our website so the whole world can appreciate the special role mothers play in our lives!
Anyone can enter, so spread the word!

***

PS – There’s also a great Mother’s Day Special set featuring candlenut products AND a video preview of Yoshiko’s new baby girl Asami! Check that out here if you want a little sumethin’ sumthin’ special for yourself or your mother! View the set and video HERE.

Beauty & Skincare / Health & Fitness / Lifestyle / indonesia — No comments
07
May 10

Safe Travels… so you think…? -Metta Murdaya

Dengue Fever is transmitted through mosquitoes in areas of stagnant, clean pools of water in tropical areas.

You know how you hear of stories of “my friend’s friend went to India/Africa/Asia/ExoticLand and got this crazy mystery illness and [insert bodily harm/damage here]…” And at some point you think, “Well, that’s got to be an exaggeration that won’t happen to me…” till it happens to you – that unrecognizable or unbelievable disease that seemed so last century? Well, that’s what just happened to me – a victim of Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever. What is it? A virus transmitted from an infected mosquito that wreaks total havoc to your system.  Dengue’s bad enough, but this was the doozy kind, the complicated one where you see death rates possibly in the double digits… What I thought was a bad sunburn leading to dizziness and nausea turned out to be a much more serious condition after the Dr. said “Blood Test!” (yes, even JUARA Girl makes sunblock mistakes, knowing all the points from Yoshiko’s entry on sunblock.) What saved my proverbial a**? Catching it on the 2nd day of the fever and being rushed to the hospital to be hooked up to fluids at my mother’s insistence; had I been diagnosed a mere 2 days later, prognosis would have been much, much worse. Let’s just say we might be the JUARA Trio. So – 7 days in the hospital with IV needles up my arms, nausea, rashes, fever, and then some… and then the virus passed. In the process, I was treating a bad sunburn with Tamarind Tea Hydrating Toner (oil-free, cooling hydration) daily. I was a lucky one and got discharged just today. Others who “didn’t do so well,” as my sister-in-law says, aren’t around to tell the tale. So what went wrong though? How the heck did I get it anyway, me, the supposed comfortable bi-global traveler? When your brother’s advice is “Don’t Die,” should I feel like I had overlooked something?

Let’s face it – bad things happen to good people. Or lots of things happen to good people, some of it just bad. Like overzealous UV rays that give sunburns and lower your immune system. Or mosquitoes that give you deadly viruses. Or the occasional typhoid that you get from a dirty cup (oh, that was so 2008…) Sometimes it’s really just a part of life, and so I realize the key is to KEEP YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM STRONG!!! A few interesting tips I am walking away with to be on my preventative well-being list, some mainstream, some more traditional Indonesian…

- Stay hydrated. Drink lots of water and keep your electrolyte levels happy – your system functions better when hydrated. If you are in SE Asia, there are many new ‘electrolyte’ drink but a good standby that’s not a sugar bomb: Pocari Sweat; it’s like local Gatorade (but Japanese inspired.) Also, when buying bottled water, (I only saw this in China though where people were refilling used water bottles and selling as new…) make sure the seal hasn’t been broken and that your bottle of water is really, truly new/unopened.

- Use plenty of sunblock. REAPPLY FREQUENTLY. I made the mistake of going into the beach for only 2 hours with not enough sunblock in a haze of silliness, then played in the water and burned like a mad – since I was so dehydrated from wedding festivities the night before, which REALLY doesn’t help either. Bad sunburns reduce your immune system too and that is no joke. And that makes you more vulnerable to a whole other host of potential illnesses like typhoid, or cholera, or even good ol’ Montezuma’s revenge… (traveler’s diarrhea.)

- Drink red guava juice, the fleshy kind with the million seeds: Keeps your blood healthy, it’s more a traditional remedy but I’ve never drunk so much in the last 6 days, and it did help… It helped maintain energy levels from draining. On that note, eat a ton of fruit. The tropics has PLENTY of variety to keep you delightfully satiated. (Bird’s nest + ginseng is another price concoction but works wonders too.)

- Get enough sleep. Nuff said. The problem with a compromised immune system is that you don’t know it until something hits you that normally shouldn’t or wouldn’t – and when you’re traveling, there’s always so much excitement that sometimes our adrenaline keeps us going longer than it should, and with jet lag for many, the first few days are filled with a haze of odd sleep hours.

- Wear mosquito repellent if you think there are ANY mosquitoes around. Malaria is prevalent in areas where the water is dirty, and Dengue lies where the water is clean. (Stagnant pools of water like little ponds after a rain, or an unmaintained swimming pool…) So you’re screwed wherever you are in tropical zone, really. You can give people Dengue by being sick and around mosquitoes that might bite your infected self, then transmit to your pal or child nearby… This wasn’t so much an issue in the past but lately, if you’re traveling to tropical areas, the infection count has hit near epidemic proportions so it’s worth the precaution…

So, stick with those basics when traveling in tropical land (or at least Indonesia) and you’ll probably be OK. The slightest sign of what might even be a cold, check it out – because it just might be not your common cold in ye lively parts! Good luck and happy travels!

haemorrhagic fever

haemorrhagic fever

Beauty & Skincare / Health & Fitness — No comments
05
May 10

Top 5 reasons why your sunscreen might give you a false sense of security – Yoshiko Roth-Hidalgo

Ah… summer… we’ve been waiting for you for so long.  T’is the season to go to the beach and enjoy, until you realize one day your skin is hot, red and damaged.  With store shelves filled with masses of high-SPF sunscreen bottles and sprays, how is it that people still end up with serious sun damage year after year?  Here are the top 5 reasons why your sunscreen may give you a false sense of security:

1)   Trusting a high SPF

SPF30 is better than SPF15 but it does NOT give you double the protection.  SPF15 filters out about 93 percent of the UVB rays; SPF30 filters about 97 percent of UVB rays. Once you go above SPF30, the added protection gets even more marginal.  Some dermatologists even suggest not going above an SPF30 because the added skin-irritating chemicals of a higher SPF outweigh the benefits of the added sun protection.

2)      Trusting that SPF is the end-all be-all

SPF only protects from UVB-rays so read labels carefully.  A sunscreen that sports an impressive SPF but contains no UVA-protection in the form of Avobenzone (Parsol 1789), Titanium Dioxide, Zinc Oxide or Ecamsule (Mexoryl) will not shield your skin from the rays that age your skin, and as we now know, also cause cancer.

3)      Not using enough sunscreen

You need about a 1-ounce shot glass full of sunscreen to properly protect the skin on your body.  If you buy a 4-ounce bottle of sunscreen, the bottle should be empty after 4 applications.  So that person who pours a dime-size into their palms and rubs it all over may feel protected, but really isn’t.

4)      Not re-applying often enough

Heat and humidity in the summer make us sweat more.  All of that perspiring  makes the sunscreen on our skin less effective.  Add to that a dip in the pool or ocean and drying your skin with a towel, and you probably have hardly any sunscreen left on your skin.  Doctors recommend reapplying every 2 hours or after being in the water.

5)      When enough is enough

Once you feel the heat and stinging in your skin, you’re already well on your way to a burn.  No amount of sunscreen can stop that process.  It’s time to just get out of the sun, period.

What are your favorite and most trusted tips and tricks to protect your skin from the sun?

Beauty & Skincare / Lifestyle — No comments
29
Apr 10

Animal Testing for Skincare? Not in this Life! – Jill Sung

CATWOMAN!

I didn’t grow up with many pets because my brother was allergic. We tried the usual, “trade him for puppy” trick, but my mom was too smart for that. Fish were our replacement. Big bulbous headed goldfish! More orangy if you ask me. All had names and personalities. Our favorite was Big Momma. Metta, I think, has had every animal on the planet. Perhaps that’s a minor exaggeration…. Yoshiko is animal happy too. I didn’t have a picture with Big Momma, but here’s Metta with her cat. So when it comes to testing on animals, we’re all a big NO!

JUARA is cruelty free and registered with PETA. Not only does that mean we don’t test on animals, it means that we make sure the ingredients we purchase are not tested on animals either. We also don’t contract testing out to other people who might test on animals – although that’s a nice loophole I hear some companies take. We love our animals…and almost got a JUARA cat, but didn’t want visitors to have to worry about allergies.

Then you ask, is JUARA safe? Yes, we’re dermatologist tested, and used non-animal means to test. We’re safe, and we love animals. I love that we can have an effect on what is out in the marketplace. And we look forward to creating even more good for earth and people products. Empowering, you know what I mean?  What else empowers you?

At Work / Health & Fitness / Lifestyle — No comments
19
Apr 10

Sometimes it’s OK to lose… – Metta Murdaya

I usually consider myself, being a frequent flyer across the world, a successful non-victim of Jet Lag because frankly, I don’t have time for it with my schedule. I have my bag of tricks – stay up the night before, plan to arrive in the daytime, stay hydrated, schedule meetings/activities the first day there so no passing out, (ok, so I lean on adrenaline as a crutch,) sleep intermittently on the plane

Sometimes you just can't beat it... and it's OK.

Sometimes you just can't beat it... and it's OK.

to start the timezone adjustment, and hope for the best. Most of the time it works. But this time, something was different. Jet lag came at me with a vengeance – like that mad unstoppable truck you see slamming into a crowded intersection in a blockbuster movie, or that dam that finally burst to the raging water who just got fed up with being held back. I’m not sure why now – not staying up the night before? Not having a meeting to roll into right from the airport? (Although that can’t be it since I did have a wedding I rushed to straight from the airport, including a quick superman change from Grungy Plane-Wear to Heels & Satin in a bathroom stall… Elegant? No. Effective? Why yes…) But still, I was out like a light by 6pm, with a cancelled a meeting and another appointment I totally slept through in the wake of my napping destruction, while still ending up wide awake at midnight. (Doh!) Perhaps this time it’s the human tendency to not be immune to what should be a natural occurrence (like resting when tired, duh) getting to me. Yes, constant work and not allowing yourself to take some time off – ah, the common crimes I see entrepreneurs commit against themselves… So instead of fighting it this time, I am going with it. I just bought a novel, calculated that I could take 2 days off of work with no major repercussions (I think it’s called a weekend…), and so far, it’s been wonderful – the forced leisure since well, my body won’t have it any other way. I like to look at it as concentrated me-time. This time, my family is out of town and my friends all conveniently are out too, so like it or not, I have to embrace my calendar-free days with reckless (and frightening) abandon. Eat when I want to. Sleep when it calls. Watch episodes of South Park at 3am. Nap at 3pm. Read a book in between when the brain is awake but the body is not. Get a facial at 2pm. Try not to fall asleep during it. Write this blog entry at 5am and trust it will all be ok… I feel naughty breaking all the “Don’t Let Jet Lag Beat You!” rules, but I think I’m liking it so far, and I can feel my body naturally adjusting to the time zone here. But now sadly, now that I’m used to it, I only have about 24 hours left of this grand let’s-not-be-so-hard-on-yourself spree, but I’m enjoying the ride. So what’s next? A JUARA event in Jakarta with amazing designer Ardistia Dwiasri (http://ardistianewyork.com/) and a series of other meetings on the horizon. Am I ready for it? Absolutely. Probably more so than I would have been had I not taken my unchosen break. Here’s to being human and giving yourself some TLC!

Extra: There is a lot advice online on how to beat jet lag, but the one post that summarizes what I have found to be the most effective is here. Do you have tips of your own?

Uncategorized — 2 comments
16
Apr 10

JUARA Mother’s Day Special

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Join JUARA Founders Metta, Yoshiko & Jill as they explain this year’s Mother’s Day special! PLUS, a special guest appearance from the newest JUARA Girl, Yoshiko’s baby girl Asami!

Buy the set here!

Eating & Drinking / Family & Friends / Health & Fitness / Uncategorized — 2 comments
11
Apr 10

Supplement tips for new moms – Yoshiko Roth-Hidalgo

What supplements are good for new moms?

If you are a new mom like me, you probably read up a ton on nutrition during pregnancy and took your prenatal vitamin religiously.  What happens after the baby is born?  All of a sudden, you are completely overwhelmed with trying to figure out how to take care of an infant.  Equally important, however, is how to take care of your own health and your body’s healing process after the stress of pregnancy and labor.   Eating balanced meals and exercising is very important but what about supplements?  I asked my friend Douglas Taurel, NYC based personal trainer and Charles Poloquin Bio-Signature coach (and also new father to an adorable, healthy 9 month-old boy) about what he recommended:

“The most important supplement I believe through experience and training that pregnant women and new moms should supplement with is Fish Oil. I suggest it to all my clients, women, men, pregnant and golden age that they should supplement with fish oil.  Omega 3 is what we are after.”  Aha!  Here it is again, Omega 3 – remember how we were told during pregnancy to take lots of Omega 3!  Douglas gave me a whole list of benefits, which made me run to the vitamin shop to get some.  As Douglas explained, women should be close to pre-pregnancy about 12 weeks after giving birth.  Omega 3 fish oil can help because it helps the body burn more fat AND it actually reduces the body’s tendency to store fat.  In addition, Omega 3 increases Serotonin in the brain which is a very strong antidepressant and helps with anxiety, panic attacks and reduces carbohydrate cravings – very important for those experiencing the postpartum depression.  It helps reduce inflammation in the body, obviously very important in the body’s healing process after pregnancy.  Omega 3 also assists the body in putting on muscle, so if you’re breastfeeding, upping your Omega 3 intake will help your baby grow stronger and healthier.

Motherhood can be crazy, especially if you are also working, but no matter how chaotic the day gets, I stick to my supplements:  a good multivitamin, extra fish oil for Omega 3 and calcium.  Thanks Douglas!  (Check out www.taurelfitness.com)

Eating & Drinking / Health & Fitness / Uncategorized — 2 comments
31
Mar 10

Duking it out: Chia Seed vs. Flax Seed – Jill Sung

What seed am I?

Metta came back from Expo West natural trade show with promises of improving our nutritional health and renewed vigor to turn a “pretty healthy” diet into “Healthy!” One of the healthy additives that she’s been raving about is Chia seeds, which I’ve been eyeing at the health food stores with a personal interest to try once my flaxseeds are used up. I currently add a tablespoonish of golden flaxseeds (I heard, though unconfirmed, that golden has more vitamins than red) to my almost daily smoothie. I experiment a bit, but it’s more a healthy smoothie of convenience consisting of Scobie Bryant’s (my Kombucha’s nickname) miracle tea, an apple (skin included), frozen berries if no other fresh fruits of the season are gracing my kitchen, yogurt/milk if available and it cuts the light vinegar taste of the Kombucha, and that tablespoonish of flaxseeds. But let’s get back into the ring…

FLAX SEEDS: high in Omega-3 fatty acids, lignans and antioxidants, B vitamins, and fiber, minerals: folate, manganese, magnesium, copper, etc.

I use whole flaxseeds because they can be stored up to a year whereas flaxseed meal can only last up to a week at room temperature because the unsaturated oils can go rancid easily. But I grind the flaxseeds before using them because that releases the goodies. Toasting flaxseeds is helpful too because it breaks down the small amounts of natural cyanide in them (also found in cashews and some beans). And according to US agencies and research, the recommended safe dose is anywhere from 2-6 tabespoons a day. Just don’t go overboard as both of these are high in fiber! If you’re a fan of the oil, just remember it does not contain the phytochemical antioxidants or the fiber.

CHIA SEEDS: high in soluble fiber, Omega-3 fatty acids, minerals: potassium, calcium, amino acids

The soluble fiber in gluten-free chia seeds is so evident that if you mix up a cup of water and tablespoon of powder, you can get a  gel in half an hour! That’s great for controlling food intake, carbohydrate to sugar absorption conversion, and diabetics where blood sugar level is particularly important. Plus chia seeds help keep you hydrated because they absorb water (a must for healthy skin and inner body health/healing). More than 20% protein, chia seeds are filled with a good mix of essential amino acids that your body doesn’t naturally make. Recommended dosage varies, but 3 tablespoons, 3 times a day is commonly recommended. Excellent place to purchase online: http://salba.com

Incidentally, a great website for checking out nutrition data is www.nutritiondata.com. It covers everything and has useful tables and comparisons.

So the winner? Undeclared. After researching both of these, I’d love to incorporate both; they serve different purposes and complement each other well. So my future smoothies will have both… It’s a win win for everyone.

JAMU - Indonesian Botanicals — 2 comments
26
Mar 10

JAMU-JUARA Inspiration #2: Crash Course in Popular Jamu – Metta Murdaya

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Here’s a bit more into JAMU itself – I talk about 2 of the MANY kinds of jamu that are considered ‘daily jamu’ for overall health and well-being. Get ready because after these JAMUs, on the next installment of the JAMU series, I’ll be getting into more interesting ones, such as ones that cure particular ailments and also help on relationship issues… yep, as in you and your significant other. Oh, the power of herbs and a little bit of creativity… :)

Also, feel free to check out our JUARA YouTube channel for more JUARA videos, where all the how-to’s on our products and other brand stuff is housed if you want to see it all in one place!

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